Five QuestionsDESTINY O. BIRDSONG

I have a dear poet friend with whom I often talk and share work, but we live in different cities, so it’s almost always online. Near the end of the summer, The Adroit Journal published a few of his poems, along with audio recordings, and listening to his reading was exhilarating, but also frightening. His presence in my space moved from static reams of text to something I could hear and feel. I was completely unprepared for the sound of his voice, even though I’ve heard it before. (I should probably say something here about the digital era and the deaths of certain intimacies, but I’ll refrain.) On the same night, I watched a movie about a stripper who murdered several men, including one of her friends, at the behest of her lover/pimp. Lance Gross, the actor who played the pimp, is a beautiful, beautiful man. But of course, in the film, he’s also physically and psychologically abusive. In one scene, he smiles at his girlfriend, then head-butts her so hard she briefly loses consciousness. In both instances — listening to the poems and watching that scene — I felt desire, vulnerability, and fear, which got me thinking about the ways we try to self-protect, and the rationales we use for doing so. That’s how the first two lines came to me, and that’s ultimately what this poem is about.

How do you start writing a poem?

Even if an image or idea comes first, I usually don’t start writing until I have a first line, a last line, or a phrase. I tend to look for language to anchor me in a poem before I can commit to it. This can be dangerous though, because, sometimes, I struggle with letting that scaffolding go. I’m working on it.

To get an MFA or not to get an MFA?

I have an MFA, so I’d never tell anyone not to get one. It annoys me when people who already have degrees tell others not to get theirs — it feels like a politics of exclusion (even though I know that’s not always the intention). So, I encourage people to go, but with an agenda. I got my MFA while also pursuing a Ph.D., and I don’t regret that at all, but I do regret not having a strategy. I never made enough time for honing my craft; instead, I spent so much time juggling, just making sure things got done. I am only just now getting truly comfortable with and instinctive about my work. Those are things I should have focused on in grad school. So, if strengthening your skills is your plan, go for it. If teaching creative writing at the college level is your plan, go for it (and look for programs that offer pedagogy training and teaching opportunities). Don’t go simply for the title, or with the false belief that just being there is going to make you a better writer, or make you feel like a more legitimate one.

Do you write in forms?

Not if I can help it. Don’t get it twisted: I appreciate formal poems. I even took a forms workshop in grad school; but it was a struggle then, and it’s a struggle now. I’m working on a new manuscript, and I’ve drafted a ghazal and a contrapuntal, but only because the poems begged to be in those forms. But they’re so raggedy right now. I’ll keep working on them, but I won’t be hurt if they change.

Name some influences on your writing that are not literary.

Just because a thing isn’t literary doesn’t mean it’s not art. My best friend has been my best friend almost my entire adult life. I talk to her nearly every day, and our conversations are filled with call-and-response, allusions, cultural references, quotes, and stories we tell each other again and again, even though, in most cases, we were both there when they happened. We complete each other’s thoughts. We know each other’s language. Every time I come to the page, I am trying to speak publicly about the languages of my intimate spaces. I’m either trying to speak a language I know, or trying to unlearn one.